Chips and Popcorn for dinner

I am definitely more of a savoury lover than sweets. I always talk about how I love popcorn so much, I could eat it for dinner. Well, now we did and threw some chips in there too!

I remember getting an idea once of 'going nuts' and have ice cream for dinner. One time a year, the family would just splurge and get nothing but ice cream for dinner. Got me thinking...but I really don't like ice cream THAT much.

Recently, I've found that the kids (and myself as well) really liked all sorts of veggies, especially if they were roasted. Carrots, brussel sprouts, squash, cauliflower; roast those babies and we love them! We went to a farm market and found all these great veggies and they had the best looking kale. I've never really been able to make kale chips properly, but came across this site. It lists really great tips and I've made the chips about 3 times now and they always turned out delicious. The popcorn was thrown in because well, like I said, I love popcorn and don't feel so guilty about serving popcorn with dinner if they're eating a plate full of veggies too.

So I'm happy to say that perhaps we may have a new 'night' and it does include popcorn for dinner!

Catching up the last bit

Phew, I'm almost done catching the blog for the rest of Fall. Here are just some pictures with captions. Too many bits and pieces for me to properly write a post for each one.

 The DIDO group has dinner at The Rocky Mountain Flatbread Co. The kids were

able to make their pizza. It's amazing the stuff he'll put on his pizza just because he likes to cook. 

Spinach? Red onions? Really? 

 This was Maddy's enrollment ceremony for officially becoming a Brownie. It was a cute ceremony.

 We had a fun afternoon  completing some new art for the living room.

 Maddy's choir had a performance at the GoGo Grannies charity event.

 Ethan begging for money asking for donations at the Scouts Apple Day fundraiser.

Ethan's Beavers group went on a field trip to see the Skytrain system. Scouts has been great for boosting his confidence.

He loves going each week and often chooses for us to not stay with him for field trips. (Chinese school...not so much, but baby steps right?)

 

Halloween 2014

This Halloween will go down as 'The One Mama Didn't Do a Thing For". I usually LOVE Halloween. Not that I wasn't looking forward to it, but I just didn't have much desire to search Pinterest and do something cool. (Ahem....I may or may not have been busy reading in the evenings rather than on the computer) Anyway, last year I spent all this time prior to Halloween working on our Sushi Family costume. Unfortunately, we were super sick last year and didn't get to really enjoy them, so it worked out that I didn't have to do anything to pull our costumes together. Here are a few pictures from our night. I have to say that it was a pretty relaxing Halloween. I could get used to this "use a random costume from before" thing. Ooops, was that out loud?

 

Mushroom Madness

A couple of weeks ago we went for a walk in the afternoon. It was the first sunny day following a big dump of rain so the playground was too wet to play. We ended up finding so many different types of mushrooms. Enjoy the pictures!

Maddy-7 years old

So I know that Maddy's birthday has LONG since passed and this 7 year old update is over a month overdue. I have no excuse, except that I've been HOOKED reading a series of books. Since her birthday I've read the first 4 of the series and finally decided that I should take a break from the Outlander series and read something else. So I figure before it becomes appropriate to write a 8 year old blog instead, I'd better get caught up.

Maddy's favourite thing to do is to read. I can barely keep up with trips to the library and she takes out about  8-10 chapter books each time. I secretly love the afternoons when we have fresh library books because the house is so quiet. I was relieved to find out from the eye doctor today that she is still good for 'no glasses'. Another favourite past time is Rainbow Looming. She got one for her birthday and she has really gotten into it. The nice thing about the looming is that finishing a project doesn't need to take very long. With the knitting and yarn looming, Maddy was very interested in starting, but since they take so long to actually finish a project, she loses interest. The Rainbow Loom has tons of videos on YouTube that she likes to follow. This year, for her Girl Guides' fundraiser, she made Christmas Rainbow Loom bracelets as her contribution to sell.

One big milestone that has started for Maddy is that her baby teeth have begun to come out. You know we hear stories of kids' teeth falling out  as they eat and they hardly notice, or they just wiggle a bit and them come right out. NOT.OUR.EXPERIENCE. Each tooth has been work. Hard work. Finally her top two front teeth are out after two nights of work. Hard. Work. At one point, through tears and that hiccupy crying, she said, "I just want it out and be done with it!" Josh said he had flashbacks to labour. Hmph! I beg to differ, but that's a different story.

Maddy's extra curricular activities are the same as last year. It was quite fun to see her move up to Brownies and to see that many of the same girls from her Sparks group have moved up too. They are a lovely group and I'm so happy that she has that connection with the girls. In her choir group, she is now one of the older kids (Her group is grades K-2) and it's fun to see her take some of the younger girls under her wing. Maddy is very social and makes new friends very easily. I don't know where she gets this from, but I hope that it will always be so for her.

Most recently, Maddy has really been pushing for more independence in various areas. She has started to make her own breakfast since the day she made breakfast in bed for Josh, Ethan and myself. She's not allowed to use the toaster or stove top yet, so mostly she microwaves a piece of bread and spreads butter, jam or peanut butter. She's also voiced the desire to do her own hair in the mornings. It's resulted in many bumpy ponytails, but she is super proud of doing this herself, so bumpy ponytails it is! Lastly, she asked to take over brushing her own teeth. We've compromised and given her the task of morning brushing and washing her face. Ahhh, it's so bittersweet to have her take over these tasks. She's definitely growing up.